MSDN Magazine recently talked to Robert Green, the Community Lead Program Manager for Visual Basic, about what to expect in the next version and how the Visual Basic team hopes to work more closely with the Visual Basic community.

MSDN What projects are the Visual Basic team working on these days?

Green We are working on the next release of Visual Basic, code-named "Whidbey." We're planning on releasing a Beta in the middle of the year.

MSDN What can we expect in the Whidbey release?

Green More productivity and more power. For example, the My namespace provides access to many features of the .NET Framework with much less code. For example, My.Computer.DefaultPrinter lets you work with the default printer on your computer. You can, of course, still talk to the default printer using the appropriate .NET Framework classes, but using My offers you a shortcut. There is also My.Application, My.User, and My.Forms. We'll ship with pre-built code snippets for performing common tasks, such as reading and writing to files, reading the Registry, sending e-mail, and hundreds more. Each code snippet will show where you enter application-specific information, such as the name of the file or the Registry key. And you can easily create your own code.

Several IDE enhancements will improve your productivity. Smart tags recognize basic syntax mistakes, such as misspelling a variable name. Exception helpers provide more information on runtime errors and should make it easier to understand why your code is failing. And "Edit and Continue" is back, letting you break while your code is running, make changes, and then continue running.

The "ClickOnce" deployment technology greatly improves the deployment model for client-side applications, which can be downloaded from the Web or a network share and automatically installed with no user action required. The application (all or part of it) can be automatically updated, and updates can be rolled back.

Whidbey is not just about productivity, though. We're also doing quite a bit of work on extending the language. We're adding XML comments, operator overloading, unsigned data types, partial types, and generics.

MSDN What are you doing to entice more developers to move to Visual Basic .NET?

Green We're going to make Visual Basic .NET more attractive to them and the Whidbey release will help. But we also want to do a better job of helping developers get the most out of Visual Basic .NET, whether they are new to it or seasoned experts. We plan to have more content specific to Visual Basic on MSDN and are working on organizing the information so it is easier to find. We'll continue to have webcasts and chats. We'll have more articles and code walkthroughs that focus on the fundamentals of using Visual Basic .NET.

We want the Visual Basic Developer Center to be a great starting point for developers who want to learn Visual Basic .NET and then become more proficient. Suppose you want to learn how data binding works in a Windows Form, or how to print, or add controls to a form at run time. In the Dev Center you'll find content that is in the MSDN Library, as well as pointers to third-party Web sites, book recommendations, training classes, and so on.

MSDN What kind of community efforts are you planning?

Green First, we will continue to listen to our customers. We've made good progress on this over the past year. Everyone on the Visual Basic team spends time on some sort of community effort. Some answer questions in newsgroups while others visit with customers or participate in Web chats. We want to do more of these kinds of activities because it is the best way we can listen to our customers and understand their likes and dislikes.

We want to help those in the Visual Basic community meet and work with each other. We can do more to promote the full range of resources available to these developers. Go to http://www.asp.net and you'll see a list of community sites and recommended books. You can expect to see things like that on the Visual Basic Dev Center.

We're planning a Visual Basic Newsletter, offered both online and in e-mail, that will highlight news, resources, case studies, upcoming conferences, as well as where to find the Visual Basic team on the road so you can talk to us in person. We're going to work more closely with the MVPs, Regional Directors, user groups, third-party Web sites, and the Microsoft folks in the field and subsidiaries to have more opportunities to talk with, listen to, and help our customers.

We are working on several other ideas and will roll those out in the months ahead. We want to work and live more closely withthe Visual Basic community, both online and as often as we can in person. To learn more about what we're doing, take a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/community.